


This Is Not A Temporary Situation

by Joysweeper



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Animal Death, Animal Transformation, Cannibalism, Canon Compliant, Canon typical darkness, Character Study, Gen, pov of a terrible person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-21
Updated: 2019-09-10
Packaged: 2020-07-10 06:11:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19901095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joysweeper/pseuds/Joysweeper
Summary: "For reasons beyond our control / there is no vehicle out."Saddler's voice was starting to sound more natural to David's ears; it was deeper than his voice, just as Saddler was a little taller, a little broader, a little older. Had been, rather.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Browsing the David tag, I saw many good fics but none that were what I was looking for, so I wrote it myself.
> 
> Title from Naomi Lazard's poem "Ordinance On Arrival". I hate coming up with titles.

After an early dinner David had to escape the attentions of his new parents, What's-Her-Face and George. They wanted to have a love-fest and cry about how dead he wasn't, he had to beg off by telling them he was just so tired and wanted to turn in early, and then they told him like five times that they were going to be downstairs and at night would be just down the hall in the guest room if he needed anything. At least all the little kids running around knew to give him some space. He'd been worried when he learned there were three of them, but apparently they knew better than to annoy their big brother.

As soon as the coast was clear Jake climbed up the stairs from the living room with a backpack on, just as he'd said he would earlier in the afternoon. David ushered him soundlessly into the room, Jake's own room, and closed the door. As soon as the latch clicked Jake was saying, "Cassie took the box apart and hid the pieces underground. You need a rat morph to reach them."

"And you've got it in there, is that it? Well, take it out," David told him. Saddler's voice was starting to sound more familiar to his ears; it was deeper than his voice, just as Saddler was a little taller, a little broader, a little older. Had been, rather. "I'm not reaching in there and getting bit."

Jake's shoulders sagged and his gaze dropped. He'd probably wanted to hear David squeal. Reluctantly he unzipped his backpack and stuck his hand in, rummaging without looking. David watched him intently, but Jake didn't jump or flinch. The small white rat he took out and held up just sat on its haunches and wiped its face with its paws, not a care in the world.

David took it from him and held on to it, feeling its solid warm weight and rapid shallow breaths, as Jake explained most of what the surviving Animorphs had discussed in the barn and David decided where to meet them. In the process Jake found the balls to look him in the eye with an obvious effort. He hated David's guts, obviously, but he knew who the bigger man was, he knew who'd held the other's throat in his teeth, and there wasn't anything he could do about it. It was Rachel who really needed a lesson.

When Jake had slunk off David locked the door behind him, sat himself down on Jake's bed, and demorphed, his Saddler-sized clothes puffing out and then hanging loose around him. Morphing humans was so much faster than morphing animals, and so much less gross; the worst that ever happened was being weirdly proportioned for a minute, and the grind of his skull and teeth adjusting. The rat squirmed in his grip as his fingers got shorter, almost managing to struggle free until he tightened his grip. 

He studied it with his own eyes as the morph completed, and started acquiring it. It was mostly white, but not a red-eyed albino. Translucent ears, dark eyes, pale brown splotches on its back. Whiskers radiating around its head. Idly he stroked its oily-soft back with two fingers. It hadn't made any effort to bite him, even before the acquiring trance started. Not much fight in it, not like the big fat guys he fed to Spawn. He'd had to start bashing them in the head and stunning or killing them before feeding time. Spawn was too much of a wuss to strangle his food. If it was alive and kicking he'd bite it, then he'd hang back waiting for it to die, and then it'd fight him and win because he really was a pathetic-ass snake without his venom glands. Had been a pathetic snake, by now. Stupid aliens.

Saddler's folks were bound to disappoint him. They were all sentimental and clingy, and he just knew the siblings were going to get in his way. It had taken _ages_ of wheedling and whining and guilting before his real parents had gotten him that BB gun, and then more for Megadeth, and Spawn had been a truly heroic effort. George and Whoever just didn't seem as cool. They'd probably think a housecat and a ball python or a boa or something were good enough. Did Saddler even have a room to himself?

The trance faded and the rat started to wriggle again. David stuck it on Jake's bookshelf so he could wipe his fingers on his shirt. Absently he watched it explore tatty sports almanacs, coach biographies, family photos, dusty action figures, and some really pathetic participation trophies. It left a drop of piss on the cover of a big glossy hardback on... whatever Tacticus was, and started chewing on the corner of some grand compedium about the Revolutionary War that could've easily been used to kill it.

God, Jake's stuff was as boring as he was. David lay back in his bed with a sigh. It was so great to be in a bed again! Softer than that hospital cot and with less starch, though also not as big or as nice as _his_ bed, it was amazing after a sleeping bag and hay. Lucky thing Jake had a lock on his door, even if it was the kind you could unlock by jabbing it with a stripped q-tip. He planned to sleep hard later and had a nasty feeling George and Whoever were going to want to check on him during the night.

Maybe he'd just break into whatever zoo was in the next town and steal a snake. It didn't have to be a cobra, just something he could hide in the house. If Saddler's little sister or one of his brothers found it and got bit, all the better. Who needed four kids?

That was all really just daydreams. David really wanted his _own_ parents, _his_ mom and dad. Everything about his life as of about a week ago, he wanted it back, and they were the center of it. With a big, loyal morphing gang hanging on his every word, he knew he could get them back. They'd have to skip town in a hurry and set up somewhere far away, but it wouldn't be the first time. And they'd be grateful to him. He'd never get his game saves or the files on his computer back, probably. In the end those weren't so important. If he had his parents everything else could just get replaced.

But it also stuck in his head, how he'd heard Dad say _if we don't find that kid, Visser Three will make us wish we were dead_ in the coldest voice. Those Animorphs said aliens made him do it... it would still be hard to be around his dad again, remembering how he'd changed, hoping he really had changed back.

Dubious thoughts like those were making him uncomfortable. David checked Jake's alarm clock. He had a couple hours before he had to get to the Taco Bell, and even accounting for spying it out first he had some time to kill. He could head out into Saddler's family and be their miracle boy some more. No one'd mind he just said he was going for an early bedtime. Then again before long he'd have to try and tear himself from their clutches and that might make him late. Poking through Jake's things promised to be incredibly boring. He'd been interested for a moment coming in and noticing comics stuff until he'd seen it was all babyish colorful titles, hardly a gun in sight, and not even current. Lame. Marco's room had been a little better, but Marco hadn't had any conveniently dying family members and had only been moderately annoying since David almost knocked his teeth in. Rachel's room, what he'd been able to see of it, was worse, though it'd made up for it by how pissed and scared she was when she found he'd been in there.

There was a tearing noise, and David raised his head to see the rat on the shelf shredding a third-place ribbon. Animals ate some weird-ass things. What was that made of, plastic?

Thinking about it now, he regretted not eating the crow he'd taken out the first time he'd morphed. The eagle had wanted to, but there'd been other things going on, and all right, at the time _he_ hadn't wanted to try it. When he'd killed the bird-Animorph he'd only swallowed a scrap of that bloody flesh, pretty much by accident. He thought he'd been checking for any signs of life, he'd plucked some feathers and then there was skin and tough muscle in his beak, almost tasteless to a bird's tongue but warm and thrilling. It was amazing the sense of victory that came with that. David licked his lips, remembering Jake's outrage, Jake's blood on his muzzle, Jake's sullen, guilty acquiescence just now.

Just this morning he'd needed to morph the lion to move Saddler after getting his clothes off and all the tubes and wires yanked out. Saddler had been like sixteen and jock-y and even as a lion David had had to bite down to haul him. There'd been like hospital stuff making his skin bitter and nasty, and it'd also been kind of gross when his teeth broke through. But lions ate humans sometimes, and the idea of Jake knowing and quietly seething, Rachel in a state of helpless fury, that had added up and made the whole thing a rush. Too bad Saddler had been too big, and time too short, to really explore the possibilities.

It was a good thought for the future though. He might want to go for greener pastures, if and when being Saddler got old. There would never again be that frisson that came with sticking it to Jake and Rachel, so he'd have to find the fun some other way.

Meanwhile in considering this he'd thought of a good way to kill time. Laying back again David focused on furious eyes and huge hinged fangs and how morphing into a rattlesnake would be like a slow, luxuriant full-body stretch.

It wasn't, of course, it was just as awkward as morphing always was. He could never seem to have everything his own way, David reflected as his tongue shrank into a twig and his eyelids fused and became clear, as the smell of the rat grew stronger and stronger and more and more enticing. Oh well. The snake's brain as it bubbled up wasn't super interested in a rat, not with the happy family meal back there, but it wasn't _uninterested_ either. He could go for a snack. Stick it to Jake just that little bit more, in case this was his pet. And, conveniently, be a good guest and rid his hosts' home of vermin.

Yeah, he decided, flowing off the bed and towards that scent of hot, live food. Today was a good day.


	2. Chapter 2

<It has been one hundred and nine minutes.>

The wire mesh had all kinds of little distortions by now and was covered with saliva, and his mouth was sore. Even so David gnawed frantically at it again, gripped it with his fingers, and wailed <You can't do this! Help! Help! Someone help me!>

He should have stayed a rattlesnake. He should have stayed a rattlesnake! He'd thought about it, about stopping and demorphing and taking that shape again, when she'd led him to the tunnel, but he'd been all swollen and sluggish with food and tired from morphing so many times so quickly, and she'd been so nice, at last she'd been respectful. He should have stayed a snake!

<What about your aunt and uncle? George and, and Elaine? They'll lose their son again! Just let me out and I'll morph Saddler, I'll stay as him, I promise!>

Rachel responded to this one when she hadn't to swearing or threats or pleading or deals. She leaned over the trap. He couldn't see her big face clearly with rat eyes. It was dark, but rat eyes could see in the dark, the issue was that everything more than ten or fifteen feet away - no, not ten feet, it felt like that when he was so small, he didn't know the distance - was blurry, so he could just make out the smears of her eyes and mouth, a suggestion of her nose. He couldn't read her expression. 

"You don't even know their names," she said, and drew out of his sight again. She was still there; he could smell her, he could hear the strain in her breath. 

<Look, I don't need to know their names to be their kid, come on! They can just be Mom and Dad! Hey! Come back, I'm talking to you! You heartless- George and Helen! George and Ellen! George and Stacy!>

He went on in that vein for a while, then switched to saying that the others didn't have to know if they let him out, until the alien spoke over him.

<One hundred and sixteen minutes.>

David shut up and tried to demorph. It was hard, the way demorphing from flea had been hard when they'd all been in morph almost too long and Marco almost got stuck. But his fur sucked in and his tail withered, and with a series of wet noises his body expanded outwards, his arms and legs softening out of the rat's hard pointed digits but still tiny. Almost immediately the cage pressed in on all sides. It hurt. He tried a moment longer - maybe the top would hinge open - but it hurt! He couldn't breathe! The conviction came that he'd die before he could build up the kind of pressure he'd need to break free, and he did not want to die. So he focused on the shape of the rat again, and the cage became a cavern once more, stinking of anger and fear and spots of rusting blood.

Somewhere above him Rachel asked, "Ax, does that reset the time?"

<It does not. In the training given to Andalite warriors before we a->

To drown it out David shrieked, <The Andalite bandits are just humans! Four humans, an Andalite, and a bird! I can tell you who they are! Where they live! You can take all of them, I don't care! Just help me! The bear, she's really->

<Two hours. It is done.>

David screamed and reached for the image of his own body. He could picture it so clearly, morphing other humans had shown him what was distinct about himself, the way he could pop his joints, the straight perfection of his teeth, the freckles on his knee, his hands on his GameBoy, the taste of cereal with dyed-blue milk, washing blood off his stinging split knuckles, his dad showing him how to aim his new BB gun, his mom combing out his hair, and it was like pushing a car, he strained and strained and fought and there was the tiniest shift, there was a flutter in his abdomen, something starting to pinch inside of his eyes! 

And then nothing. A door closed silently and completely and that was it. That was all. He could remember and imagine and concentrate all he wanted, and nothing would happen ever again.

<No! NO! NONONONONO NOOOOOO!> He lost control of his body and on rat-brain instinct shrilled a rising note of distress and ran back and forth, trying to find a place to hide. Hinges whined above and a huge hand descended and closed over him. He twisted and bit, tasted blood, and still it pulled him into the open air. 

Rachel said something he was incapable of comprehending, he bit and bit and bit and then the alien as a vast, horrible bird landed on her arm and seized him in harrier talons and hauled him up, wind-whipped, jolting with every wingbeat above a vast, incomprehensibly soft-blurred landscape of darkness and light and paralytic animal terror. Through it he knew he would die if they dropped him, so he didn't set his teeth against the talons, not there or in any of the handoffs that came between the harrier's short sharp toes and the monstrously heavy curved claws of the eagle, because he did not want to die.

David hung helpless in the rushing wind and screamed their secrets out into the infinite night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought of having Ax mention numbered minutes that were significant to base fourteen. Why would seven-fingered aliens find five and ten significant? But I couldn't understand base fourteen, so I just winged it.


	3. Chapter 3

David was making a fishing net. 

Did he know how to make or use nets? No. Would it work? He had no idea. Was it easy? Not at all, he couldn't look down and see his weird thumbless hands at work, he had to rely on touch and especially whiskers and put it down and back up to get a look at it. And he had to keep away from the rats so they wouldn't do God knew what and ruin it. But collecting fishing line and twine and working at this helped things somehow. A little. Just like his heroic, ongoing efforts to try and make a fire and to get the shore clear enough to arrange a HELP that a plane or boat could see, and that wouldn't get carried off and disarrayed by the birds in the day and the stinking rats at night. It was something to do and gave him something, however pathetic, to hope for. In this case, the prospect of fresh fish not stolen from the birds.

Then there was something like a sound, but not a sound. He froze, ears cupped, whiskers twitching and splaying out, waiting. It came again.

<-llo? A - ou - ere?>

Some wild feeling clawed its way up his chest, making him squeak out loud, and he said <I'm here! Who's there! Hey!>

<Is - is the right is - nd?>

Dropping his net David hauled as fast as his little squat body could go, up out of his burrow claim, past the rats lurking in the shade, out from under the bushes or trees or whatever and into the open air under the flat, faded sky. He scrambled out onto the shore, such as it was, and atop a big plastic drum that had washed up there, where he rose onto his haunches and then, tenuously, stood up almost upright. <Yes! Yeah, I'm here! _Help_!>

<I can hear you better now. You're somewhere on this rock, right? David?> The voice was clearer, if still faint, and not cutting out. Someone was there, talking to him - shouting to him, really. He cursed the directionless nature of thought-speak and his blurry rat eyes. When he squinted just right they focused a little better, colors and details sharpened, but he couldn't just do that all the time. There was nothing new here. Seabirds flying and squabbling, no sound of boat engines nearby, no waves lapping on a boat's side, no unusual smells.

<I can hear you! I'm here! I'm on the big blue barrel! Help, get me out of here! I'll do anything you want!>

<I can't see you, but I believe you. And there's nothing I can do to help. This is as close as I'm getting.> Under the strained quality that came with 'shouting' the voice was cautious.

He wobbled and sank back to his haunches. <That doesn't make any sense! Where are you!?>

There was a hiss of air and he blearily made out a pale plume out in the choppy water. When he squinted he saw something dark and mostly submerged, closer than any of the boats had come, further than he'd ever been willing to swim out. <Right here in the bay. The water gets shallower any closer in, and it's all rocks here. I'd risk getting battered or beached if I came any closer, and I am just not curious or interested enough for that.>

<You're a whale?> he asked disbelievingly, and then, <Cassie?>

The voice didn't sound quite like her but something of it was similar, somehow, and thought-speak had always been weird. Had she come for him, after all this time? He remembered her coming into the barn and talking to him, telling him about things she and the others had done, answering his questions without sneering. She was the nice one. The only nice one. He remembered the smell of her tears above his cage. He remembered her wolf teeth in his leg. No. She'd been nice for a while, but even if she did feel bad she'd never go against the others. This couldn't be her.

<No. That is, I'm obviously a whale, but I'm not Cassie. My name is Aftran 942.>

So they'd made new Animorphs since sticking him out here. Ones with weird names. It didn't matter. <Look, it's not storming right now. I can't get out there, but if you just demorph, you won't have to worry about the rocks. You can swim on over here and we can have a nice little chat and help each other out. Please? I haven't had company in I don't know how long,> he said, trying to be pathetic, hook her sympathy.

He'd agree to anything to get off the island. Somewhere on the mainland he could find out how to escape and contact Visser Three somehow, and Rachel and the rest would wake up with alien lizards standing over them. Or maybe he'd find the box first and get out of rat morph, they'd said being trapped was forever but it couldn't be, one of them was a bird and still-

<I can't.>

<Why not! That's not fair! What good are you, then!?,> he snapped, losing his thread. Actually talking to another human being was not working out like his daydreams. She kept not saying the right things, the sympathetic horror and outrage just wasn't coming. Real people were always less understanding than they should be, he'd forgotten how annoying that was. <How are you going to get me out of here if you're a whale!>

Implacably she told him, <I'm not here to help you escape. I found out about you, and I only had a general idea where you could be until S'reee told me about the voice, and then I decided to come by and find out for myself. Maybe hear how you were doing too.>

<How am I doing?! Are you serious?> He laughed, both in thought-speak and, in that high pitched rat way, out loud. <They turned me into a rat! A girl rat! They left me on an island full of rats! You know what rats do to strangers? They tear them apart!>

<And it's so much worse to be a female rat than a male rat, is it?> Aftran inquired. <You're a rat either way, it's not like being human at all. But you still have eyes and something like hands.>

He gaped for a moment. Months ago he'd tried to only acquire male animals. There was no telling with fleas and he'd had to suck it up with the rattlesnake. Cassie had told him that female eagles were even bigger than the males and he'd spent some time turning that over, wanting an even more badass bird morph but being glad there wasn't one in the barn. Otherwise there'd never been any question. <Uh, duh? It's just like school, you got things divided up and they don't cross. The alpha rats are all males, they're the biggest ones, they're the toughest ones, everyone's afraid of them and they've got all these suck-ups. They go around sometimes and kill the guys who aren't submitting, or just rip them open and let them die. I'm not getting any bigger and they don't want to fight me, and the females it's not the same.>

Some of his best and biggest meals had come from watching males fight and keeping track of the losers. The winners, mostly alphas - there was only one in the island colony at a time, but who that was had already changed twice in however long he'd been here - didn't usually follow to finish off and eat the losers. Even when they did, they didn't eat everything. The toughness and tenacity of the boss rats was fun, but they were stupid. Fresh meat was a treasure here, where almost all food was washed up by the tide or came from birds one way or another.

Slowly, as if pulling each word up from somewhere, Aftran said, <They tear _male_ rats apart, when a strange one appears. It's the male rats that are most aggressive with each other. If you were in a male rat morph, you would be dead by now.>

<Whatever,> he said, to cover the way his rapid little heart had started racing, and started washing his face to try and be cool. <Just demorph and come up to the shore, all right? I can't come out to you unless I have a boat, and guess what, I don't.> He'd tried making rafts a couple of times. Both capsized, because a raft small enough for him to move around was too small to hold steady in the waves. Also he only had a general impression of where the mainland was - presumably, in the direction from which he could hear more boat traffic.

She sent him an impression of irritated patience, like a sigh without the sound of one. <Didn't you hear me? I can't demorph. I'm a humpback whale _nothlit_.>

<What? You're joking.> He went up on his back legs again, squinting hard to find her shape again. She just wasn't close enough and was too obscured by waves; his impression was of a big rock only just sticking up into the air.

<Nope. I stayed long enough in morph that I can't morph back. Actually it's almost nothing like what I expected. The real whales know I wasn't born as one. Some don't like an alien in their waters, but they're not as xenophobic as humans get about it. Others...>

Aftran went on talking, but David didn't really hear. He was remembering the killer whale morph, the massive hassle of leaving town just to reach a park that had any, the risky business of getting it acquired, almost drowning trying to morph it on the wave-lashed beach, the meandering search for the right stretch near shore, the growing awareness that in all that big ocean he might never see them if they were even there.

Even when he'd found the Animorphs in their dolphin morphs he'd had to almost fight the orca brain to consider them prey and target them, when it just wanted fish. Fish and to find its family. The whole time he'd been in orca morph he'd been clamping down on the desire to call out for his mom, because it turned out that dumb whale was just a giant momma's boy, wanting her even more ardently than his lion morph had wanted other lions. It had really put a damper on the whole reveling-in-strength-and-power part of being the killer whale, that and the constant uncertainty about how long he'd been in morph versus dread of demorphing and remorphing in a stormy sea.

He could have been trapped like that, searching - no, he wasn't going to think of it that way. He could have been sealed into being huge and sleek and deadly, untroubled by darkness and weather. Big and bad enough that sharks would find something else to bother. He could have been able to casually power his way up to a boat, or even near the shore, and talk to people until he got what he wanted. And then be unable to do anything on land at all, admittedly. Visser Three might not be grateful enough to bring him his cube.

David clenched his teeth and waited for a pause in Aftran's recitation on whale politics or whatever. He wanted this meandering weirdo on his side, at least for as long as it took to either get her to pass a message on or for him to get a raft out to her. He was rusty at this, but finding something you could both complain about had usually done some good. <So what'd the Animorphs kick you out on? Not sucking up to the Psycho Cousins? Telling the wrong joke? Not having a normal human reaction to being shot at? Ooh, was it not getting on with their pet alien?>

<Hah. Look, they didn't kick me out. I was never really one of them - they wouldn't have let me join if I wanted to, I'm sure. Not that I did,> and the tone of her voice sounded encouraging, this could work. <No, this was to save me from Kandrona starvation. I'm actually a Yeerk. Surprise!>

His whiskers twitched, and he found himself starting to grind his incisors together, making the chattering crackling sound rats made sometimes when worked up. She'd tricked him, she wasn't even human. He didn't know how he felt, except no, he did, getting out was the most important thing.

<Oh, great! Look, you have to get me in touch with Visser Three. I have information for him! He'll be grateful,> David wheedled, his tail lashing. It was hot out here in the sun, on top of warm salt-crusted plastic. The rat brain wanted to find a shadowy piece of cover to hunker in.

The tone of Aftran's voice changed, closed somehow. <Wow! You don't know anything about him, huh.>

<I met him once,> he said. The sound of his own teeth sharpening on each other almost drowned the cries of the gulls. <Sure, sure, he's a bad guy, but listen, he's the only way to get back at the Animorphs. Don't you want that? They _hate_ Yeerks. They're this little band of amoral psychos playing noble and they're so smug about it. They need to go down. And you need to help me with that.>

Out there in the water she blew another plume of mist. <You know, Cassie never outright said it, but she hoped that you were taking some of this time to think about things. To understand what you did wrong.>

<Wrong? Yeah, right, whose side are you on?> David snapped, taken aback. < _They_ came to _me_ and ruined my life! All I did was try and take some control back, and they judged me for it, and stuck me here, as this! You don't get it. You don't know what it's like!>

<Cassie ruined my life, too. She was right to do it. Thanks, David,> and she talked right over his _it was easy for you, you didn't have a life to ruin!_ with <I was just starting to get nostalgic for arguments in the Pool. You reminded me what a drain they usually were. So much charge sent out at people too insulated to hear. Have fun on your island rat adventure.>

Her vague, blurry form started to diminish, sinking under the constant waves. The two-lobed whale tail appeared and sank. David thrashed in place and chewed noisily on the salt-crusted edge of the barrel. <It's not an adventure, you big floating cow! Get back here! You're wrong! Who are you to judge, anyway? It's not fair you get to swim around and I'm stuck here!>

<It's not fair you get to have hands and fit into small spaces without - rting yourself, but - have it> she called back. He couldn't see her. She was cutting out. <I'm just -d I'm not - you!>

Then there was silence. He yelled for a while, saying he hoped she got eaten by sharks, filling that silence, until he stopped and let himself back into the shade to groom off. Weirdly, it was kind of a relief. People - even aliens - were more tiring than he remembered. More obnoxious. He didn't need them anyway. He didn't need anyone. It was fine. It was _fine_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rats in crowded and stressful environments are aggressive to each other, especially towards males, and extremely towards strange males, even in more spacious and plentiful environments. Aggression towards female rats isn't as well studied, but males are substantially less hostile to strange females. Some resident females may respond aggressively towards them, but this drops off quickly.
> 
> In this fic David was able to demorph just enough to give himself marginally better eyesight - the squinting doesn't work so well for rats - and insides scrambled enough to never go into heat. I also decided he wasn't an albino rat, because their hearing is worse and their vision is much worse and deteriorates significantly. I wanted to write the fic about David and misery that I wanted to see in the world, but it turns out I have limits there.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check the tags for warnings on this one! Rats make great pets but they live bloody, miserable lives in wild colonies and infanticide and cannibalism are common. 
> 
> I could not have written this as I did without ratbehavior.org. Check out the section on rat senses!

Very far away, someone was screaming. It was annoying, a repetitive series of yelps and wails, but he was used to it.

Life before the island was like some kind of dream, much less real than this little world, and yet he remembered the dream often. Sometimes fully articulated regrets about it all pushed into his thoughts like teeth through skin, but he couldn't chew himself with them now. Not when he was on a heist.

He carried a smelly clump of used bedding all through the twisty passages of the warren, rubbing it on walls and the other rats, stopping when there was space to rear up and hold it in his hands so he could pull bits off with his teeth and leave them, generally spreading out the scent of the babies until he'd distributed the whole lump of damp paper and shed hair. A lot of whiskers and sniffing noses passed his in the dark. After all there wasn't a rat on the island not interested in that smell, especially the males. None of the ones who'd gotten any action lately were going to bite, but the current alpha was pretty good at keeping eager females bottled up, so there was a lot of interest. He could hear several males following him back towards the den he'd prepared.

The mother rat blocked his way for a moment before she recognized him and eased back. She did nothing to stop him from crawling over her plump and squirming babies, or from carefully picking the fattest one up in his mouth and repositioning it. He'd trained her to trust him, after all, and she wasn't at that defensive peak that would have her totally suspicious of everyone.

That he could actually _train_ the other rats had been an exciting discovery. They weren't just obstacles and competition, they were potential lackies. Given a good combination of food bribes, tones of voice, the patience and foresight to build incrementally up to a task, strategic grooming, and a whole lot of _time_ , they could be useful.

At five days old the baby rats were quite a bit larger than newborns, moving on all fours with some vigor and purpose. They were still young enough to be easy to move, to have their eyes sealed over, and to have - he checked with his tongue - only the scattered beginnings of fine, soft fur over tight and mostly hairless skin.

Perfect. He got into position and waited for the screaming to pause. It took a few seconds before it died down and he could be heard.

<Come here,> David told the rats lurking outside the den. The few among them he'd trained to come at his call scuttled and hesitated, smelling the mother and her rising tension at their presence, and he said it again, <You idiot wuss! Man up and come _here_.>

One approached, and the mother lunged, biting the intruder. He might have retreated and that would have been the end of it but David was there, keeping it up. <Come here. Come! Don't you smell them? Come here!> and so that first one hesitated and another male pushed past in a darting foray, and there was the bright smell of blood as the mother defended her nest.

At the other entrance, David undid the work he'd done to block it, picked up the fattest baby in his mouth, and pushed his way into the narrow passage out. After a few body lengths he was in a more accessible stretch of burrow that he'd just scented with baby, and rats that hadn't followed him back to the main entrance turned towards him, sniffing.

<Shoo! SHOO! Get out of my way! I'm not sharing with you losers!> They flinched back when he yelled at him, though unlike their grandparents they didn't flee outright. Too used to him, too used to that distant scream. It was enough to let him scurry past, an ache building in his neck from holding weight up off the floor, and up and out into the light.

He had to shoo away gulls, then, while bouncing stiffly across baking rocks supporting straggly weeds to his house, his own personal bolthole, with the tarp roof and the bottle walls. David had to set the baby down to open the door that kept the other rats from stinking up the place, and drag the baby in and to his table, and close it again.

Here, where there was some actual light, he could see that the baby was dark gray instead of newborn pink, that it could stand on all four feet and clumsily walk, though it still looked more like a grub than a rat as it nosed blindly around, trying to find its mother and sibs. Its breath was milk-sweet and it was mostly hairless. Normally that would make it irresistible. He could let his rat brain take over and start eating it like any other food. Here it balked. Getting the mother's trust meant he'd spent a lot of time in this den, near these pups. A rat was not supposed to eat familiar babies, or even see them as food. Just one more hassle in an endless list.

David pushed through the reluctance and braced his hands on his table so he had a better angle, nosed the baby rat down flat on its belly, and bit through the back of its neck. Its bones were soft and yielded to his teeth. After that, the rat brain had no hesitation. 

It was warm and tender, with a subtle sweet flavor and none of the reek of adult male rat, not to mention none of their hair to be got around. This was the best food on the whole godforsaken island, outside of freak accidents like fruit or wrapped, intact granola bars washing up onto the beach. There was no planning for that, while baby rat dinners could be arranged regularly. As a bonus, they didn't come crusted with salt! If only he could cook them.

He probably didn't need to go to quite today's level of effort for this delicacy. Males who hadn't gotten lucky lately were always trying to kill and eat unweaned babies, and even though the mothers always fought them, in a few days they'd forget and be just as willing to get some from the baby-eating males as from anyone else. He wouldn't have been able to go to town on this baby in front of its mother, and if he'd done it in front of any of the other rats they'd want the body for themselves, but scenting everything and arranging for a distraction was probably not really necessary. It was something to do though. Just like setting up a house and everything else.

The heist was done. All the work was done. He couldn't savor meat so well that he didn't go on rat brain autopilot after the first few bites. There was that screaming again! Well, it wasn't going to put him off dinner. He ate, and despite himself in the back of his mind unratlike thoughts bit into him, gnawing one after another.

Obviously if he'd stuck with Saddler's parents and given up on the cube, or even just been more suspicious about the handoff, things would have gone better. Obviously. He didn't even need to think about that one, that's how obvious it was. As long as he survived and wasn't a roach or a flea anything would have been better, but here he was, and here it was.

He should've stayed as the rattlesnake. Being a snake on Rat Island would be paradise, or at least like living at an all-you-can-eat buffet. He wouldn't have been able to build or work on anything, though, and he would have drowned in the snake's simple, focused, unquestioning brain. Died without dying. When he'd first thought about that it had been horrifying. It still was, but-

What would have happened if he'd taken the morphing power and a few morphs and waited until the Animorphs weren't looking and just flown away? All he'd done was meander around and test the lion and get caught and scolded, when he'd had so much freedom. Maybe they'd still have chased him, but they really wanted to fight aliens, so probably they'd have given up if he'd just booked it far enough. He had had so much power and so many choices then and he'd been thinking so small.

Cassie had morphed weird sometimes. There was some alien word? Whatever. She wasn't special. He should have been able to control his morphing like that, make his shape more human, so when he got stuck he still had good eyes and hands with thumbs.

She'd been kinda hot, Cassie, more than he'd thought about at the time. Not as hot as Rachel, who was a _babe_ even if she was also a total psycho, she did not make the effort to look good. Jake probably thought Cassie was a nice armful though. He should've tried charming her and got her on his side. Hey, you could be in my gang, but then she bit him. So all right that wasn't cool.

It would have been great if he'd been able to get the cube and get out of there. He couldn't clearly imagine the kind of people he'd have approached and surrounded himself with. In his head they all kind of looked and smelled and felt like rats. But good rats, smart ones, useful, that could talk and everything and didn't need to be bribed with baby rat feet and tails to learn to please him.

He should have killed Rachel when he'd crept into her room. Wait, he should have gone after her little sister, whatever her name was, he should have demorphed and put his teeth through her cheek. So much more _direct_ than vague threats. That would've hit Rachel like a truck.

Way back when, he could have been more careful at school in Minnesota - had it been Minnesota? He couldn't remember which times his parents had picked him up and moved because of Dad's work and which times it was because he'd been caught, and just which state the last place had been in. But if he'd kept an eye out, if he'd been cautious and didn't get caught, maybe they wouldn't have moved to California when they did. Vaguely David remembered that Dad had needed to be there for the big world leaders thing. It could have just been a trip, he was probably still always on assignment.

Maybe if Aftran hadn't-

"Oh, Davey-boy!" Almost in his ear a voice, a _spoken_ voice. Spitting out a bloody mouthful he sprang away, immediately hitting the bottles that made his wall. Trapped! He whirled to face the enemy, hissing. The tone of the screaming changed.

The _thing_ continued speaking in a shrill, merry voice. "David the rat! I have a wonderful opportunity to offer to you if you can fit it into your schedule, but I must apologize. It's so unmannerly of me to interrupt dinner, I know. Infant cannibal tartare is your favorite entrée, isn't it? Excellent choice! I miss it. Metaphorically, of course, since I don't eat raw flesh like a wild animal."

It was maybe half his size, and kind of like a naked chicken with a tail and weird broken-looking wings or hands. Its skin was dark and warped. It had a big round head and big, dark eyes, and there was green skin around its eyes and mouth that made _his_ eyes smart. The green was so bright! There was green on the island, plants and glass bottles and washed up wrappers, but it was as dull as any other color, not radiating and strange like this.

More importantly it was squatting on his bed. He'd worked hard on that bed! It was a cloth bag stuffed with fur and fabric scraps and contained in a cardboard box and it had a rag for a coverlet, it was _his_ and _nice_. He hissed and shrieked in rage, baring his teeth.

"Honestly, David, it's flattering and I fully understand the sentiment, but you can stop screaming. I come as a friend!" It considered him with a birdlike head tilt as he sidled with an arched back and continued hissing, his tail lashing. "Hmm. Excellent, I was hoping you'd give me the excuse!"

It held out a distorted hand and snapped its fingers, and then there was something like a great wind blasting through him. David's paws stayed on the floor but somehow he was also blown backwards, out of his body. He saw himself, a dirty white rat with tatty ears, an inch missing from its tail, and lumps in its neck, scarred and filth-streaked with its face and front paws bloodied. He saw the 'house' he'd made as a squalid den made of trash, full of trash, just a rat's nest with better lighting and halfhearted organization. He heard his voice in thought-speak, wild and high and ragged, ranting <getoutgetoutgetout I'll kill you! kill you!> on and on and realized that this was the screaming, it had been him all along.

He saw the creature, in a bizarre sideways way, as something _much_ larger contorting its appearance somehow to look smaller than him; saw that it was tethered to or an appendage of something he could not grasp, could not see, that filled the sky and saw him through the dirty tarp that was his ceiling-

And then he was back, small and loathsome and with joints that ached. David gasped for breath and stopped screaming, cowering like that would save him.

"I do love that trick," the creature sighed. "Back with us, David?"

<I- oh, God, don't hurt me,> he whispered. His rat brain wanted to roll over and expose its belly, keeping it and his paws between the threat and his back and sides, but he knew that was no protection at all here.

The creature cried "Ohhhh, Davey-boy!" in tones of mocking sympathy, smiling more widely than its mouth should have stretched. "Why that's the last thing I or my magnificent employer want! What fun would that be? Stepping on a rat, honest, that's no effort at all. No, I am here to _help_ you, to give you an offer and an opportunity. Nothing long term, but you may be interested in a gig that could benefit us both. As a token of good faith, how would you like your recent little problem dealt with? It's entirely fitting, but I understand it's _very_ distracting and could be a problem on the job."

David licked his lips and was distantly surprised to find the taste of the baby rat on them. None of this made sense, but oh, there was the lurch of desire he'd half forgotten. To be human again! Somehow he'd forgotten, somehow he'd gotten used to crouching on the ground and the world being a blur. <Please! I'll do anything.>

"Well then! By the beneficence of my lord Crayak, I hereby restore you!" It tittered and raised its arms. 

David fidgeted, imagining himself growing larger, imagining his fur melting away, and there _was_ a sense of something changing, a whole body flex that felt both nauseating and sort of invigorating. All kinds of aches and pains stopped and his tail and ears felt different. He wiped his hands over his face and didn't find scabs or crusting, but this was still the long face of a rat, still hands he couldn't extend out on proper arms.

<H-hey, no! Don't lie to me! I'm still a rat,> he protested, wanting to be sullen and angry, still thinking of that huge thing he'd sensed overhead. What if it was still there?

"The goal of half of mankind, and you don't appreciate it. _Youth_ , David. Rats hardly live any time at all! You were getting terribly decrepit so I made you young again. Oh, don't look at me like that," it told him, smiling. "There's fitting like aging and going the way of all flesh, and then there's fitting like being treacherous little vermin that walks into traps and has to be taken out afterwards. Besides, it's who you are now! How clearly can you even remember being human?"

David shuddered, not thinking about how in his memories it was like he'd been feeling things with his whiskers, seeing colors as faint, seeing distant things as blurry, like he'd been born some kind of giant mega-rat and not human at all. <You weren't clear at all. You let me think you were going to make me not a rat anymore.> He was whining, and he couldn't stop himself. None of this was fair.

"I sure did. You can call me the Drode, by the way. In the long-lost language of my people it means 'wild card.'" The Drode gave him that wide, wide grin. "So, employment! Wanna get off this rock and really give that gloriously wicked Rachel a shock?"


End file.
